Massive Fire At Tesla Gigafactory; Locals Want Production To Be Stopped

The fire broke out at the Tesla Gigafactory after a pile of cardboard caught fire on the northeastern part of the facility.

The fire broke out at the Tesla Gigafactory as 800 cubic metres of paper, cardboard and wood were burned.

A massive fire broke out at a Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide in Germany. The fire broke out at the Tesla Gigafactory after a pile of cardboard caught fire on the northeastern part of the facility, the media has reported. 

The fire broke out at the Tesla Gigafactory as 800 cubic metres of paper, cardboard and wood were burned. The fire was doused using water with foam agent, according to a report published in Investing.com. "It will be checked whether shredding work would have caused the fire," said the police. However, nobody got hurt.

It is being said that it took 50 firefighters, including 12 from Tesla's own brigade to douse the flames at the Gigafactory. 

The citizens' initiative Grünheide (BI) is calling for an immediate production stop at the Gigafactory. "Our worst fears have come true. We demand a production stop until the causes and circumstances have been clarified and all safety-related measures in the water protection area have been implemented," Steffen Schorcht from BI was quoted as saying by the Investing.com report.

The Gigafactory is mostly located in a drinking water protection area. The Strausberg-Erkner Water Association was alarmed after examining drone footage of the fire. Tesla's own fire brigade at Gigafactory Berlin called the local fire department of the municipality of Grunheide at 3.33, where the factory is located, for help on Monday morning, says a report by auto-tech website Electrek. According to information from the Oderland regional office, 800 cubic meters of paper, cardboard, and wood reportedly caught fire, resulting in the blaze.

While locals mostly welcomed the project, there was a decent amount of people who objected to Tesla establishing a factory at the location due to the impact on the local environment and especially on the drinkable water supply.

Now one of the groups still fighting the project, the citizens' initiative Grunheide, is calling for an immediate production halt.